


the fear of crossroads

by robinsegg



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Cleric Riz, Gratuitous Lasagna, I haven’t set up some relationships yet, Kristen and Riz LOVE each other they are FRIENDS, M/M, Religious Discussion, Trans Fabian Seacaster, gotcha this is ALSO a fic about masculinity!!!, trans male character(s), trans riz gukgak, what if Riz was a cleric of Cassandra? I ask? 5000 words later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: It was a little unmooring to see all the small differences his friends were always gaining, changing where he couldn’t notice until it was too late. Becoming new people all alone in the dark. And him, always playing catch-up.It was a little scary to watch all his friends become different people when Riz-- didn’t feel like he was moving. Fabian started dancing and Fig got a girlfriend and Adaine forgave her sister and everyone was-- different. More confident in their place in the world. More normal. And he’d never be, he didn’t think.
Relationships: Kristen Applebees & Riz Gukgak, Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 15
Kudos: 67





	the fear of crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> Hi gang!!!!!!! I have a lot of thoughts about Riz and Kristen and how much they love each other and also how much Riz’s ideology aligns with Cassandra AND how Fabian and Riz are such a t4t relationship. I love them all so much!!!! This is the first chapter and some relationships are gonna pop up that I haven’t tagged yet but I will once they pop up!!! Love u all <3

Summer was for growing. That’s what Riz had decided the past month. Among the melting ice cream and clothes sticking to your skin and music blasting from open windows, there was growing. Sprouts of green in cracks of sidewalk and in his friends. The knowledge that this was a transitory period and an endless moment of stagnation. He didn’t know how much he loved it, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

They were in Basrar’s one afternoon, the summer heat making anything else impossible. Kristen twirled her spoon around. “I wanna clean out the uh-- like, the church. Tracker’s like-- she’s not around, which is cool, we’re on a break, I think it’s cool that I get to be like my own person and stuff and so does she. But it’s like, it’s July and I wanna do some spring cleaning y’know and so much of the stuff in there isn’t mine y’know I want to make it my home because, I mean, it is?” Riz nodded, slurping down the dregs of his strawberry milkshake. “So do you wanna help me?”

He wasn’t sure how much any of what she was saying was actually true or just bravado, but he was betting on a 75% bravado- 25% truth split, just because she wasn’t a very good liar. Everyone could tell that it hadn’t really been Kristen’s choice to break up, but they were all letting her pretend it was mutual. Mostly, Adaine had told him in confidence she thought it was for the best they broke up, and Riz was inclined to agree.

He looked at his watch, frowning. 2 PM. “Now?”

“No! No, totally not right now we won’t have enough time and it’s my turn to make dinner tonight anyway, and oh yeah do you want to come over for dinner? I’m making lasagna.” 

A smile slid across his face. “Sure. Mom’s out with Gorthalax tonight anyway so I was just gonna work on my case and stuff.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kristen said through a mouthful of ice cream. She swallowed and coughed lightly. “What’s that about?”

He looked to the side, a frown overtaking him. Riz wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. “Honestly, I’m not really sure it’s an actual… case. The guy who hired me asked me to find his sister and as far as I can tell she never went missing. She just... died. So I don’t know what to do about that because the guy’s convinced she’s out there and it’s just kind of-- sad.” 

She hummed. “So what are you doing about it?”

Riz took off his hat, running a hand through his hair. Her eyes stayed focused on him. “At this point I’m just following through on the last threads so that I can try and tell this guy she’s not out there.” He put his hat back on. Kristen looked back down at her ice cream. “I mean, I’m giving him back his money no matter what. And it sucks but-- like, I can’t help him, and it’s not as if I have any family contact info, you know?”

“Yeah.” She scrunched her face up in that way she did when she got sad, leaning down to rest her head against his shoulder. “That’s fucked, Riz.” He squirmed a bit, warm and content, a small pearl of happiness in the midst of a larger, more encompassing sadness.

“Sorry for bringing down the mood,” he shrugged gingerly. “It’ll be nice to get my mind off this, anyway. And I didn’t know you cooked.”

“I learned,” Kristen said grimly, sitting up. He laughed at the haunted look in her eyes.

Mordred Manor’s kitchen was large and sunlit and full of _stuff._ He was so used to hanging out at Seacaster Manor that sometimes he forgot how warm and loving a big house could be, more comfortable in his tiny apartment with the forgotten mugs everywhere and case materials left out for anyone to find. Riz sat on the countertop and watched Kristen rush around haphazardly, grabbing one thing and doubling back for another, leaving the original where she took the second and then going back for it again, and so on and so forth. He assumed there was a method to the madness, but as he listened to her ramble about what she was doing, Riz thought that this was just her at her most… Kristen. She was always chaotic and passionate, but this low-stakes mess was proof that chaos and passion were her on-switch, not a panic button. It was nice, to know that Kristen was Kristen, inching towards something like okay, even if it was a long and hard crawl.

“Do you need help?” Riz asked eventually, after she’d settled beside him. He was swinging his legs and she’d somehow already gotten flour on her nose.

Kristen looked at him. “You can help with the roux, if you want. If you know how.”

He jumped down from the counter, going towards the stove. “Yeah, I mean, mom isn’t a big cook and she told me dad was more of the cook in the house and I kinda thought it’d be cool to learn so she gave me some of his favorite old recipes and kinda let me go wild.” Riz dropped the butter in, tilting the pot around. “I’m not that great yet but sauce is pretty easy, y’know? You can’t mess up sauce.” Butter melted, he spooned the flour in. Kristen had a funny look on her face when he turned towards her, and he tilted his head a little.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just-- oh, _shit,_ I forgot the noodles,” her eyes widened as she rushed over to the pot, and Riz shifted to poke at the beef. They continued like that for a while, trading off pots and getting carried away with other things, almost forgetting key ingredients and consistently overlooking much less important ones. It was nice, even though they’d both burnt themselves multiple times and had almost completely messed up dinner multiple times before somehow salvaging it.

“Someone else is usually helping me but I told them that I wasn’t making anything big tonight so like, thank you,” Kristen sighed, closing the oven door. “The fact that I didn’t burn dinner--”

“Yet.”

“Okay, whatever, you almost burnt it too. Anyway, this is good. They’ll all be surprised I managed to make this without burning down the kitchen and I’ll get to be all smug unless Adaine does some oracle shit and says what actually happened.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, sitting down heavily in a chair. As he sat down next to her, Riz noticed how all the chairs appeared to be mismatched, taken from at least five different dining sets.

“Where is Adaine, by the way?”

“With Zayn in the graveyard, I think. She doesn’t tell us when they’re hanging out, because we’re ‘too nosy’ about her love life, apparently, even though it’s ‘not a love life.’ I mean, I guess dating a ghost would be really hard? So I get why she wouldn’t date him. And he’s not really my type. ‘Cause I’m gay. But even if I wasn’t- y’know.” Riz nodded like he understood. Of course, he didn’t. He never really understood these things, and he wondered if it was a-- fault of his own. He searched because it was hard for him to understand, because the world was complicated and seemed to be against him, not just physically, a tiny goblin slinking around the world’s darkest corners, but in the words of everyone around him. Someone always seemed to be telling another story when they spoke, and Riz could never figure it out like others could. Especially when it came to romance. Everyone was three steps ahead of him, and not just in their own lives. It was funny. They seemed to know him before he knew himself. He wondered if Ayda’s spell helped her with that, if they were in the same boat, or if it was something different on his part, something more- unnameable.

In any case, dinner was nice, and they didn’t burn down the kitchen, and Adaine didn’t rat them out even though she clearly knew, and Jawbone happily clapped Kristen on the back in a way that clearly delighted her, and he got to bask in a satisfied joy that he imagined was similar to his father’s, maybe when he’d made a meal for his mom or something. He felt closer to his dad in that moment than he had since going to heaven.

Afterwards, Riz and Kristen and Fig all climbed up on the roof. Adaine cast fly on herself, hovering smugly by them.

“You could’ve cast it on one of us,” Fig said as she lay face-down, hair falling out of her braid.

Adaine shook her head, landing gracefully on the roof. “I didn’t want to waste spell slots, you see.” 

Riz laid down and looked up at the night sky. The world was large and the sky yawned, its mouth open wide. He felt tiny, tinier than he was, like everything and everyone around him was tiny too. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Just… a big one. A Big Feeling. “I’m gonna need a ride home,” he said quietly.

Kristen, curled around Adaine, said, “Jawbone’ll drive you home no sweat. Or Sandralynn. She said something about wantin’ to talk to your mom I think.”

“Why can’t she just call?” Adaine asked. Kristen shrugged lightly.

Fig, still facedown, said, “Mom has like-- there’s shit she likes to say face-to-face. Says it’s a body language thing or whatever. I think she just doesn’t like phones.”

They quieted down, mindless chatter giving way to a contented silence. Adaine scrolled through her crystal, Kristen looking over her shoulder. Fig had grabbed Riz’s hat and sat it on her head. It had been a nice day. He felt warm all over. On the way home, Riz texted Kristen: _what time should i be over?_ After a moment of contemplation he added a tentative _:P_. Jawbone was singing along to the radio and Riz drummed on the dashboard, albeit offbeat to the song. She didn’t answer until he’d gotten home, responding with a simple _uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh like 8 ? 8s gr8._

*

Riz woke up in the morning with a sheen of sweat on his body, sheets crumpled at the foot of his bed. It was 6 am, his room still dark, and he was shaking. It hadn’t been a nightmare, it hadn’t been his dreams. Those were normal, the nightmares, for anyone. He just-- he just woke up, and it felt bad. It felt like everything was irritating and bad and the clothes on his skin didn’t fit and the hair in his face was too long and his skin was stretched over his skeleton too tight, too wrong. He didn’t want to see Kristen, he didn’t want to see Fabian, or Adaine, or Gorgug, or Fig. Honestly, he just wanted to curl up in a dark corner with a Hardy Boys book, which embarrassed him.

Riz couldn’t hear his mother clattering around in the apartment, and so he slinked quietly off to the bathroom. In the shower, he could feel his hair sticking to his neck and let out a low, long whine, distressed with his-- everything. The tiles were a shock of cold against his too-hot skin, the lukewarm water turning ice cold after long enough. Eventually he turned off the water and sat down on the edge of the tub, shivering a little as he dripped water on the linoleum floor.

He just wanted to feel right. It sucked, this-- wrongness, this humming wrongness, like all the days before that were right had never existed and it was forever going to be Wrong, he was never going to actually be the boy everyone indulged him in letting him pretend to be. The worst part was that he knew there had been good days before and good to come, and he couldn’t actually let himself absorb that information. Data without a purpose. Nevermind that no one actually knew he was trans, nevermind that everyone accepted Fabian, that no one had ever even doubted Fabian to be a boy, that it was unfair to say no one ever doubted Fabian, nevermind all that. His body wasn’t matching up with his head, and that meant no logic would ever get through to it. Sucks to suck.

Sklonda got up eventually and drove him over to Mordred Manor, which was out of the way of her job, and that made him feel guilty even though he knew she didn’t mind, not really. The ride was silent except for her yawns and the morning news on the radio, which talked about a murder and the day’s forecast. Neither made Riz’s ears perk up. She parked in front of the manor, turning to him.

“You feeling okay? Didn’t hear you banging around the apartment this morning,” she said. Sklonda smoothed a hand over his head, rubbing her thumb on his temple. Riz nodded, not quite looking at her.

“I’m all right-,” he said, blowing out a sigh. “I’m just-- you know, it’s, like, the Thing. You know. The Thing.”

“Ah, yes, completely,” she replied. There was a soft frown on her face and her eyebrow had quirked up. “The Thing.”

“You know. The-- trans thing.” Riz scrunched up his nose. “Not feeling great today. But it’s fine.”

Sklonda sat back, an ‘o’ expression on her face. “It’s not a dirty word, you know. It’s okay--”

“I think I see Kristen actually so I gotta go bye love you mom have a nice day at work!” Riz kissed her cheek and all but fell out of the car, hearing only her cut off “well, all right then--”. Very little could make him stay for a conversation like that, and in front of his friend’s house of all places. He didn’t go through the front door, instead circling back to where Kristen’s little church was. From what he remembered of it the last time he’d been, it was a dark and musty thing that hadn’t seen much use at all. It was kind of what he imagined a haunted church to be, which was sort of technically true since Zayn apparently hung out there sometimes and also there were ghosts there before him anyway. So maybe it was a haunted church before it was Kristen’s church.

Kristen wasn’t in there yet. Probably she slept in-- he knew her sleep schedule was all out of wack. Riz slipped into a front pew-- she’d get there when she got there, and he could have some time to clear his head. And if she wasn’t there in fifteen minutes he’d find Adaine. He looked around the church. It was… cleaner than he remembered. No cobwebs or shattered glass on the floor. Riz knew, in his head, that Kristen had to have already cleaned it when she was preaching the gospel of Yes! but there was a difference, he thought, from imagining and seeing. It was a little unmooring to see all the small differences his friends were always gaining, changing where he couldn’t notice until it was too late. Becoming new people all alone in the dark. And him, always playing catch-up.

It was a little scary to watch all his friends become different people when Riz-- didn’t feel like he was moving. Fabian started dancing and Fig got a girlfriend and Adaine forgave her sister (which Riz still didn’t. Riz didn’t think he would ever like Aelwyn, and that was okay, because she had no interest in him and he had no interest in her) and everyone was-- different. More confident in their place in the world. More normal. And he’d never be, he didn’t think.

Riz took his hat off, clenching it in his sweaty hands. “Hey, Cassandra,” he began. This was stupid. He hated this already.

“So you’re like-- the god of doubt, and stuff. Or not really the god of doubt? Of mystery and the dark, and sort of, how that can be comforting. Not knowing.” He took a deep breath. “You’re Kristen’s god, I don’t have a god I think, and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to… pray. There’s a lot of not knowing in this. Maybe you like that. I just-- I don’t know what to do. Where am I going, you know? My thing is supposed to be mysteries and getting clues and solving things. And I still want to do that, I think, but not forever. Not the only thing.

“It feels like I’m keeping so many secrets. I’m a hypocrite because my whole thing is supposed to be solving the mystery and I’m just-- there’s so much about me I don’t understand. That I don’t want to understand. And it feels like I’m going so far behind my friends. I’m going so slow. I just want to. I just want to understand? Myself? But also like, know who I’m gonna be. And you can’t tell me that. But I wish you could.” He thought there was a leak in here somewhere. There was a quiet _plink_ every few seconds, counting out the minutes of this awkward, humiliating prayer. “I think I want to help people. That’s all I want to do, and I don’t know how.

“I probably didn’t have to say any of this out loud. You might not even be listening, I mean I’m not a-- follower. But, thanks for being here. If you are listening.” 

And then he opened his eyes. Riz didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he thought, kind of, that there’d be something. His family had never been religious, he didn’t know what he was doing. Kristen always seemed to have these big moments with gods, not that he expected his shitty prayer to create a new god or anything but… was he supposed to rely on faith alone? Hope that help was out there, whatever that meant?

Riz sighed and got up, checking his watch. Twelve minutes had passed. He went to find Adaine.

*  
Days passed. Riz went back to his- not normal mode, but his Standard State of being. Not angry at the world or uncomfortable with everything about his body or haphazardly laying himself prostrate before a god. He’d given up on the case and given the man back his money, even though it hurt to see how heartbroken the guy was. He couldn’t bring back someone from the dead, he was just… the guy who looked for clues of an empty grave. Riz couldn’t save someone from themself. 

The world turned and he was, for all intents and purposes, happy.

And then-- he wouldn’t call it a nightmare, per se. Because it wasn’t bad.

There was a room, and four pulsating walls, and though Riz knew there was more to the room, all he could remember was the presence of a room. He couldn’t remember the room itself. Maybe it was too much for his mind to comprehend outside of dream logic.

He was sat on… a bed, he thought. And there was someone across from him. It was Cassandra, he was pretty sure, but then it wasn’t. They wore a tie-dye shirt still, the same as Kristen’s, a camp counselor look he couldn’t help but remember magnified, when they were grief-stricken and as tall as a mountain.

“Hi, Riz.” Their voice was soft, but their face changed a little. Ears pointed out a little, and their eyes got cat-like, dark with amber slits in the middle. “You called to me, and I’m really,” they waved around the room, “here. Or I’m sort of here. But it’s me. It’s a dream, but it’s me.” They talked a little like Kristen, which was funny.

Riz scratched at his neck. “Do you answer… all the prayers of people?”

They smiled. “I don’t have a lot of people praying to me yet. I love to answer prayers.” They paused, then continued after a moment. “Do you want my help?”

“I mean, you’re the god of-- of mystery. And I solve mysteries. And I thought that maybe, you would, y’know, help me find answers, because we have that in common. I just want to help people and to-- to, you know what I want, you heard me praying.” The more Riz looked at them the more they seemed to change. Cassandra’s face grew slightly more catlike, barely noticeable unless you were looking, though the rest of them stayed the same, and a small magnifying glass appeared in their hand. He shifted uncomfortably and began biting at his knuckle, mostly because they seemed not to notice the change overtaking them.

“I can help you, I think. With some of it. I can’t give you answers, and I can’t teach you about yourself but I can be someone in the dark. Someone to keep you brave even when you’re looking at yourself. When you need it, I can be the hand you hold in the dark, and I won’t abandon you. There will be someone to help you help others.” They gave him a small smile, one that was-- refreshing in its honesty. “That’s what I’m here for. The warm hand of night. Do you want that?”

He went still, a frown overtaking his face. “Yes,” he said, nodding slightly. Riz’s eyes were wide as he looked up at them, eyes inscrutable, filled with stars and amber as they were. “Yes, yes please. Did you… did you change on purpose?”

They shrugged. “I’m still me. Cassandra. But you’re not Kristen. She sees me as a god of doubt first, and you need something different from me. I’d love to provide it, be the god of mystery, but I think that means I can’t be the same person. I’m still- I’m still figuring out who I am. I’m changing. That’s-- I think that’s okay.” He was helping them change, he realized. The person in the dark, watching as they changed in the aloneness of night. Riz had nodded hesitantly, and then he’d woken up, the last thing in his mind their nervous, hopeful face. 

There was something else there, coursing through his veins. He realized that Cassandra hadn’t said how they would help him, and Riz had thought it was more of a metaphorical “I am your god now” kind of thing but-- he was a cleric now. _Help you help others_ had taken on a different meaning.

*  
By the time he’d gotten up, Kristen had arrived. His mom was looking through the fridge and he made a note to himself to get groceries later. Riz yawned, walking into the living room slash kitchen, rubbing a hand at his forehead. 

“Riz Riz Riz Riz Riz Ri-” Kristen said, slamming open the door.

“Fuck, Kristen!” He shouted, tripping over the rug in surprise. “It’s like 8 am, why are you here?”

Sklonda frowned. “How did you get in? The door was locked.”

“Hey Sklonda, how’s it feel not working for the pigs anymore? Riz taught me to pick locks.” Kristen threw herself onto the couch and Sklonda looked like she was about to respond, but instead sighed. “And you’re a cleric now, loser. With no warning? The first other follower of Cassandra is one of my _best friends_ and I _just_ found out!”

“I Just found out too!” Riz shot back, rolling over to look at her. He waved his hands haphazardly. “This is like, this is a new development, okay?”

She rolled off the couch and landed unceremoniously on top of him. He let out a loud wheeze and tried to squirm out of her hold. She began speaking. “Okay, so like, what happened? Have you always wanted to be a cleric? Are you gonna help me with church stuff now? You gotta know this is wild, the only other cleric I like is-- well.” Kristen looked at him, eyes wide and bright. Riz settled down in her grip, making eye contact with Sklonda, who gave him a thumbs up.

“I- that day I came to help you clean the church. You weren’t there and I prayed to them, and they visited me in a dream and we talked about helping people and so I’m a cleric now too I guess. Not much of a story.” They looked at each other. The apartment was quiet, the early morning muffling the sounds of clanging pipes and the hiss of the fans. An experience like this was so strange-- the mundanity of everyday life, of the motions Riz went through everyday, and the wondrousness of a faith recognized in the other.

“Double clerics back at it again,” she said, and he smiled.

“I don’t know Kristen, you’ve got a hell of a lot more experience than I do. Gonna be playing a lot of catch up.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine oh my god you’ll learn we’re always in life-threatening situations you should get enough experience soon but oh man, this is awesome. You’re-- this is just--” she flopped her head onto his chest, overwhelmed. He was a little overwhelmed, too.

He sighed. “Yeah, yeah I get it.”

“It’s just been so long, you know?” She mumbled. 

They went silent, for a second. It was stupid, he realized now, but he hadn’t considered, when he was praying, how Kristen would react. He paused. The enormity of this new… thing was impressing itself upon him. Faith was something that was a huge part of her identity-- and he forgot, sometimes, that Kristen had grown up in a cult. That she had been a church girl for a huge chunk of her life, and had abandoned her community, albeit one that was evil and hurting her, for… the great unknown. Doubt and searching and endless questions and never an answer. And now she had a god that loved her back, and-- a friend next to her, another person in the dark. And Riz was so used to working alone he hadn’t considered-- faith and community. The potential for understanding each other. He forgot his blind spots sometimes, the big red buttons he never saw.

Maybe this was his first job as a cleric of Cassandra.

“Yeah. I’ll help with church stuff. I wanna help.” He smiled. “Can you get off me now? I need to get dressed.” Kristen rolled over and Riz got up, shaking the numbness out of his limbs. Sklonda squeezed his hand and said they’d talk about all of it later, and then she’d turned on the TV. A few minutes later they were out the door, Kristen’s arm slung around his neck. 

“Where do you— where do you want to go?” He said, shy all of a sudden.

“I kind of already made plans with Fabian and Fig if you wanna come too! This was sort of a detour. Long walk, though.” Riz knew the distance to Seacaster Manor, having walked there more than he cared to admit. Obviously he didn’t say that. 

He shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s fine. We can talk on the way.”

It was a long walk, even if Riz was used to it, and the sun rose steadily. The sidewalk seemed to stick to the soles of their shoes, sweat was slung around the back of their necks, and Riz eventually had to shed his vest and shove his hat into a pocket.

“I have no idea how you can walk around in _tweed_ in the middle of summer,” Kristen said eventually. Any attempts to sustain conversation had dwindled as their heads grew heavy and lethargic with heat and exhaustion.

“Okay, can you imagine me in jorts?” He retorted.

She laughed. “I kind of want to see you in jorts now.”

“Absolutely not. Never.”

They lapsed back into silence at that. Riz stayed focused on the tapping of his feet on the sidewalk. Kristen walked on the asphalt, ignoring the honking horns of angry cars moving around her. It was kind of peaceful, he thought, walking around quietly in the late morning, the only disturbance of the silence being the horns and the birds. They probably should’ve tried to catch a bus, he knew, but it was still nice.

The tops of Seacaster Manor began to peek over the horizon. “What do Fig and Fabian even want to do, anyway?” He asked, looking over at Kristen. She was in the process of tying up her hair in a ponytail, biting at a hair tie she had produced from- somewhere.

“Oh! Uh, I don’t know, actually. Rave. Go to hell. Makeovers? Kind of a tossup, I guess. Do you think I should shave my head?” She tightened the ponytail, blowing at a stand of hair that had landed in her face.

Riz joined her on the asphalt, tugging lightly on the ponytail. “It’d look cool, I think. And lesbians like that look, right?” Kristen looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know, I’m just guessing!”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess they do.” They came up on Seacaster Manor, and Riz could see the outline of Fabian in an upper window. He opened the door, which was just-- unlocked, for some reason. Cathilda walked out of an adjoining room and smiled at them both.

“Master Fabian is up in his room with Figueroth. Why don’t you two join them and I’ll get you both water. It looks like you both walked all the way here!” She said, shooing them over to the stairs.

Kristen, in an echo of that morning, banged open the door. Riz tumbled in close behind her, catching sight of Fabian and Fig.

“Took you long enough,” Fig said.

“I had to take a detour,” Kristen stressed, pointing at Riz. “He’s a cleric of Cassandra now so he can like, save people’s lives and stuff. I had to congratulate him.” At Kristen’s words, he saw Fabian’s eyes widen and smiled sheepishly.

He shrugged. “You know.” 

“Oh, wow, new summer thing, huh?” Fig said, wide-eyed. Fabian stayed silent. 

“Yeah, I guess. It’s probably gonna last… longer than the summer, though. What were you guys doing?” Riz shifted nervously, not sure why he was nervous, not sure what was actually happening besides that Fabian was still looking at him with narrowed eyes. Cathilda bustled in and out of the room, leaving water for them, and Riz sat himself in Fabian’s desk chair, watching as Kristen dove onto the bed. 

“I’m trying to teach Fabian how to use this like, music maker online,” Fig said. “And he’s rich so I’m trying to get him to buy me a MIDI fighter.”

“So are you getting into like, techno now?” Kristen asked.

“Electropunk,” Fig and Fabian said at the same time, indignant and put upon voice respectively.

Fabian sighed loudly. “Do not get her onto this topic or she will spend an hour discussing the intricacies of electronicore versus electropunk. It’s _riveting_.”

“But yeah, they’re a huge difference, and also we should go to the Durinson Mithril Factory? And check out if we can like, project stuff up there? I’m envisioning something… huge, in my head.” Fig said. 

The three of them, after some waffling and “eeeehhh”-ing, eventually just nodded reluctantly. They really didn’t have anything else to do.

“Oh, I can drive, if you guys want! I got my license,” Kristen said. 

“They let you have one?” Fabian asked, scandalized. Riz elbowed him, to which he was given a betrayed look.

Fig fidgeted. “Fabian and I were gonna take the Hangman, right, Fabian?” He nodded hurriedly. She shot an apologetic look at Riz, which was more embarrassing than the flash of jealousy he got at the thought that Fig would get to wrap her arms around Fabian and ride along with him.

“Guess it’s just you and me and Gilear’s new-old car then, Riz,” Kristen said, wrapping an arm around her.

Riz wrinkled his nose. “How did you get Gilear’s keys?”

Shrugging, she held up the key ring, which had a small pepper spray bottle attached to it, for some reason. “He left the keys on the hook so I took them.”

“I feel like me teaching you to pickpocket has not been great for your morality,” he said, holding open the door for her. Kristen gave him a bright grin, nodding as they walked out, watching Fig and Fabian race off. “Also, please don’t kill us on the ride there?”

“No promises!”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me @repressionattic on tumblr and @swordatsunset on twitter!!


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